theshatteredempireseriesfandomcom-20200214-history
Kingdom of Daggerfall and Greater Betony
The Sovereign Kingdom of Daggerfall and Greater Betony is one of the chief realms of High Rock, ruled currently by King Camaron of the House of Thagor from its capital city of Daggerfall. Dating back to the early years of the First Era, the kingdom boasts considerable antiquity where continuous political existence is concerned, and it has long been buttressed by the structures and trappings of a rigid social hierarchy. In recent years, the kingdom has expanded to encompass most of western High Rock up to the Wrothgarian Mountains, which has forced a reluctant repositioning of the highest titles of the realm. King Camaron Thagor now reigns as the King of the West, his kingdom at its greatest extent - including the most recent acquisition of Camlorn - styled the Kingdom of Daggerfall and Greater Betony. This is ample evidence of the leading role Daggerfall Proper (an area roughly corresponding to the borders of Daggerfall and Tulune before 3E417) assumes in this new construct; indeed, despite spirited competition from the kingdom's second-largest city of Camlorn, the patrimony of House Thagor remains the prime political, economic and cultural centre of the West. __FORCETOC__ Etymology 'Daggerfall' is a compound word, a reference to the semi-mythical throw of the dagger alleged to have delineated the borders of the new Nordic colony. Daggerfallian historiography traditionally maintains that the Nord chieftain responsible was a jarl of Skyrim, banished for aiding Elven refugees; this was recently refuted by the Nibenese scholar Praxedes Sulpicius, whose research into the culture of political banishment in the First Empire found no evidence to support a high-profile refugee fleeing westwards in a timeframe compatible with the accepted date for first Nordic settlement in Daggerfall. To date, Daggerfallian historians have completely ignored Sulpicius' study wheresoever it concerns High Rock. Geography Accounting for near a quarter of High Rock's total land mass, the Kingdom of Daggerfall and Greater Betony is understandably geographically diverse. In the east, the wooded foothills of the Wrothgarians loom over the great plains and gentle, rolling hills that stretch between Camlorn, Phrygias, and Urvaius. To the southeast, they are broken by the forest-swamps of Dwynnen; to the west, by the sparse smattering of woods that ring Daenia. Southwest, the altitude climbs sharply, giving way to the craggy dales and tall hills of the Ilessan highlands. Past that, the West seems nearly endless forest, save for whatever glades and plains have been clawed back from nature by the local clans - until it stumbles suddenly into the moorlands of Glenumbra, and then at last the sea. The land in the Far West is ancient, and scarred equally by time, war, and the divine. Past the market-towns and the hamlets, past the tilled fields and pastures and unkempt bocage, the forest is not yet tamed; stray from the Imperial highways or the old cobblestone tracks of the Bretons, and you risk losing your way and life both. Witch-covens and werebeast nests hide away in the deepwoods, where the trees grow so old and so thick, their branches are woven together. In some places, all is dead-still and silent, only charred wood to mark the passing of the Warp of the West. And rarely - and only in the deepest forest, - the sylvan sprawl is broken by the thick and weathered trunk of one of the timeless wyrdtrees, where Arkay and Y'ffre are said to sit and rest sometimes on their wanderings, and where the Bretons' druids gather to sing, talk, and meditate. Outside the near-mythical clutches of the forest, life seems much simpler in the Bretic West. These lands are densely populated, especially in the south of Daggerfall Proper - the Southweald, held by the Archdukes Acquet, - and so villages and little towns hide behind every which hill and twist of the road. Much of the open land is worked, and split apart into plots for serf and noble alike by rows of hedges tall and short. Decrepit ruins of ancient wizard-towers break up the rural monotony, otherwise disturbed only by tall, stern castles or the occasional larger town, rich enough to round itself with a stone wall. It is only in the very southern tip of the land, where the spires of Daggerfall itself loom like man-made mountains, that one might break utterly with nature and become lost instead in a veritable maze of rock and iron. Daggerfall Proper The very west of the realm is typically referred to as Daggerfall Proper, encompassing much of the political and cultural heart of old Daggerfall. It does not, however, correspond exactly to the borders of the pre-Warp Kingdom of Daggerfall - in modern times, the isle of Betony and the greater part of what used to be the Barony of Tulune are also considered Daggerfallian, being as they are inextricably bound to the old kingdom's core. A land of sharp social contrasts, but altogether affluent, Daggerfall Proper remains to this day one of the agricultural powerhouses of High Rock. East of the city of Daggerfall and along the coast of the Iliac stretch the plains of the Southweald, the product of long centuries of deforestation and agrarian enterprise. Several rivers and a plethora of small lakes and ponds dot the region, otherwise famous only as the breadbasket of Daggerfall. Towards the old eastern border with Shalgora, the port town of Debury perches on the Bay - equal parts city and castle, home to the Southweald Mint and watched over by Arkmoth Legion Fort, since appropriated by the local Archducal House of Acquet. North of the Southweald is the wooded Pysant, where the land begins its steady climb towards the border glens. A chain of castles and lesser fortifications snakes through the region, a stark reminder of the fragile and uneasy peace that lingered for centuries over the borderlands between Daggerfall and now-subjugated Glenpoint. Of these, only one - Castle Tamwych, the ancestral seat of House Bridwell on the very edge of what was once the Kingdom of Daggerfall - still answers directly to the throne; most the rest owe their fealty, by blood or oath, to the Archdukes Pierrel, who reign most often from the imposing towers of Cagnay that straddle one of the main local waterways. Just to the southwest, poised almost centrally, the great city of Daggerfall dominates the region. The greatest port in western High Rock, and rivaled only by Sentinel and Wayrest throughout the Iliac, Daggerfall is not a coastal city - but it has grown to subsume both banks of the river Dirne, which feeds directly into the Bay. Several inlets join into the Dirne throughout the city, and it is in one of the inlet crooks that the fabled Tower of Raven sits, the very centre of this sprawling urban cobweb. Past the city of Daggerfall and the river Dirne, the forested flatlands give way to steep, craggy hills known as the Border Wolds. Beyond them are the fertile riverplains of Tulune - the spoils of the recent War of Tulunese Succession, bestowed by King Camaron upon the Archducal House of Beowen - whose north-eastern edges brush against the thicker woods of Glenpoint. In the south-west, meanwhile, the hills spill out across the rocky, wooded coast to make for a landscape truly onerous; a corner of the region known only for its many witch-covens, and for the irreverent sternness of the local Archdukes Paey. History See also: A History of Daggerfall The long and storied history of Daggerfall is arguably one of the kingdom's greatest - and most jealously guarded - treasures, preserved in the many thousand pages of the Annals of Daggerfall and the works of vast multitudes of eminent Daggerfallian historians, alike. It is a well-known anecdote that the first of Tiber Septim's emissaries to arrive in Daggerfall were gifted a copy of the Annals to pass on to their Emperor, and that speaks volumes of the weight many in the West place upon the antiquity of their realm (the second half of said anecdote - that Tiber Septim then allegedly used the gift-book to prop up a bookshelf in the Imperial Palace - notwithstanding). Little is known of the earliest years of Daggerfall; save a few passing mentions in the registers of Balfiera, and some oblique references scattered throughout the surviving (and available) writings of Raven Direnni, most of it is the stuff of chant and legend. Much of what we know of the first crowned king of Daggerfall, Thagore, reaches us through the knightly cycles composed about his life - the so-called Chants of Thagore - and historical fact has to be untangled from a web of myth and superstition. All we can surmise with any certainty is that, by Thagore's day, Daggerfall had long been ruled by witch-stewards placed there by the Direnni; Thagore was merely the first with the gall to claim for himself the title of king, and the ability to enforce his ambition despite numerous challenges from countless neighbouring wizard-lords. Built upon the bare-boned remnants of the Direnni administration, in the years that followed Daggerfall came to scavenge together something approaching the lumbering hierarchical clockwork that drives the kingdom today - the foundations of statehood. When dissenters and rebels began to clamour not after land to extend their own hilltop kingdoms, but after the throne in Daggerfall, they were acknowledging that something had shifted during those three centuries of hegemony in the West that followed Thagore's reign. This 'something' allowed the Bretons of Daggerfall to thrive despite successive challenges - the Yoku MakeWay in c.1E808, the Thirty-Year Siege of Orsinium of 1E950-1E980, and the near-total dissolution of public order that followed the heavy toll paid in the Wrothgarians. It was throughout those dozen or so years of almost constant infighting at the dawn of the First Era's second millenium that the Kingdom of Daggerfall can be said to have been set definitively upon the path it now follows. This was the end of the fabled glorious past that the West has spent the next several thousand years pining after, when history crossed from myth into cold, hard reality. Not since those days when kings of Daggerfall numbered well in the dozens while the rule of the Twin Thrones hardly reached past the walls of their citadel have the Kings in the West ever put their kingship before the title of Steward. Many of the old clans perished, many of the old towers crumbled; and when the dust finally settled, a changed kingdom was left standing. Though the years number more, there is, perhaps, less to be said of Daggerfall after the watershed of this Betony Interregnum. By conquest, negotiation, and predatory marriage, the House of Thagor survived the Thrassian Plague and the Akaviri invasions alike - barely scraping by one year to prosper the next. The rule of the Reman Emperors was but a brief and distant flash of peace against the backdrop of endless wars between the many kings, princes and princelings of the Iliac, where only three - Daggerfall, Sentinel and Wayrest - stood head and shoulders above the rest, and which groans under the fear of war to this very day. Recent Years Main article: The Greater Betony Campaigns When High Rock was subjugated by Tiber Septim's legions at the close of the Second Era, the Kingdom of Daggerfall was among the first to welcome Cyrodiilic overlordship - for which it was allowed to remain largely untouched, indeed favoured, by the Imperial bureaucracy. With most local matters palmed off to the ancient and well-established machinery of the kingdom, and with only the thinnest veneer of Imperial oversight, matters continued much as they had for hundreds of years prior, proving once and for all that Daggerfall was well and truly impervious to all change. Such, at least, seemed the case for much of the Third Era. It was a typical Iliac exercise that would ultimately see the face of the whole province irrevocably changed, when the ancient rivalry between Daggerfall and Sentinel flared up once again - this time, over the disputed isle of Betony. In the end, it was the Kingdom of Daggerfall that carried the field, but the labyrinthine intrigues spun behind the clashing of armies sent an echo that would build up to be the single greatest change the province had seen in centuries. With the vengeful spirits of kings prowling the streets of the capital, and amidst persistent rumours of meddling by the Emperor's own Blades, High Rock was reforged literally overnight. But the Warp of the West brought no lasting peace to Daggerfall. All was still only for a brief while; as soon as the great lords had reassessed and repositioned, the West exploded into a flurry of chaotic skirmishes and roundabout negotiations, King Gothryd doing his stubborn best to retain the new conquests so unexpectedly thrust upon him, even as they struggled to tear themselves away. In the end, another uneasy peace was struck in the face of an impasse and under the growing shadow of Wayrest, and the King of Daggerfall was named King of the West. Though it held for a time - certainly longer than anyone had ever hoped, feared or expected - it could not last forever. The Oblivion Crisis split open the honeypot that was new land ripe for the taking - with Northmoor's baronial line extinct, King Gothryd stepped in to 'keep the peace'; his nobles were not far behind in carving up land wherever they could, and vassalizing those lords who would not budge so easily. And though the old king's reluctance held the tide back for a while yet, it was not terribly long after his passing that this ramshackle order broke down for good. Under King Camaron, Tulune was inherited, Glenpoint annexed and Glenumbra tied securely into the many-layered web that is the aristocracy of Daggerfall. For the first time in years, the Kingdom of Daggerfall stands poised to look further east past its own nose, where Wayrest looms at the foot of the Wrothgarians. And while many in the West feel scarce inclined to chase after wars eastwards, more and more mutters are heard of confidence, even of change. The Warp, some claim, broke more than the old political order; and perhaps it truly is that the Kingdom has passed again into myth, into the fabled, heroic past that once birthed Thagore - and a realm that spanned the whole of Betony Greater. Economy The fortunes of the Kingdom of Daggerfall are often confused with those of its capital - and, certainly, with the more prominent example of Wayrest and its overwhelmingly urban economy lingering not far in the east, it is easy to see where this presumption might originate. Nor is it entirely unjustified; as the most populous city in the kingdom, Daggerfall is certainly the single greatest centre of industry throughout the West. The blazing furnaces of the capital's Iron Street - home to many of the city's base metallurgical industries - are said never to fade; the thick smog that lingers over this corner of Daggerfall certainly doesn't. Potters, brewers, enchanters, armoursmiths, alchemists and many other craftsmen labour day in and day out between the city walls, while countless ships and riverbarges ply the river Dirne, hulls laden with goods. Unlike Wayrest in the east or many other Bretic cities, however, Daggerfall is not a free city, nor its many guilds autonomous. From proud steelworkers to alleyway prostitutes and catamites, all citizens of Daggerfall are clients to the Crown, its to protect - and extort. Every single one of the Royal Guilds of Daggerfall - down to and including, in recent years, the once-Imperial Guild of Mages - exist not as independent collectives of craftsmen, but as parts of the all-encompassing central hierarchy; legitimized by and in the service of the Kings and Queens of Daggerfall. In this regard, they are not terribly far removed from the enserfed rural peasantry that is the true backbone of the economy. Indeed, famous though the kingdom may be for its spellwoven steel, it is agricultural produce that provides the bread and butter of the Daggerfallian economy, and ownership of land and souls that underpins the wealth of its vast aristocracy. Throughout much of the western kingdom, freedom is a rarity - reserved for the nobility and little valued among the commoners. The Daggerfallian hierarchs reign over their social inferiors in a system almost akin to the purposeful and structured subservience once imposed by Clan Direnni. Much of the rural commonry is shackled to what land their clans and families were given by the ruling lords. In return, they work the great estates of the nobility - and it is them that have turned Daggerfall into one of the breadbaskets of High Rock. Culture Society Law Scholastics Politics Demographics Category:Daggerfall Category:Lore